PetroChina, the nation's largest oil producer, has set the price
range of its A-share Initial Public Offering (IPO) at 15 to 16.7
yuan per share, the company announced on Wednesday.
If its IPO price is fixed at 16.7 yuan per share, the oil giant
would be able to raise a record-breaking 66.8 billion yuan (about
US$8.9 billion) from its imminent Shanghai listing, surpassing the
66.58 billion yuan achieved by China Shenhua Energy Company, the
country's largest coal producer, earlier this month.
The company has been handed the green light from the country's
securities watchdog to issue up to four billion A-shares on the
Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Experts predicted PetroChina would finally issue the shares at
the high end of the price range, a practice followed by recently
returning red-chips such as China COSCO Holdings, China
Construction Bank and Shenhua.
The price range was decided after the company staged a three-day
consultation from October 22 to 24.
According to the company's prospectus, it will use 6.84 billion
yuan and 5.93 billion yuan respectively to boost production
capacity at its Changqing and Daqing oil fields. A total of 1.5
billion yuan will be used to build production facilities at Jidong
field, the country's largest.
It also plans to invest 17.5 billion yuan to upgrade its
Dushanzi oil refinery and ethylene facilities and six billion yuan
in expanding an ethylene plant in Daqing, in northeast China.
PetroChina is the first of the country's three petrochemical
giants including Sinopec and the China National Offshore Oil Corp.
(CNOOC) to get listed on overseas stock market.
PetroChina began trading in Hong Kong and its American
Depository Receipts were listed on the New York Stock Exchange in
2000.
Citic Securities Co., UBS Securities Co. and China International
Capital Corp. are the main underwriters of the issue.
(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2007)
